


time is dead

by anotherthief



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:31:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2807702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherthief/pseuds/anotherthief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cary's time in prison through snapshots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time is dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akshi/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy! Happy Holidays!

"Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." - William Faulkner

 

Day 48:

“There are only two days: the one you go in and the one you go out.”

He's heard clients say that before but he's not sure he ever really believed it. But somehow less than two months into prison life, Cary is starting to get it. Every day is the same with one day bleeding into the next.

Bleeding might be a poor choice of words.

However, he has also done his fair share of that as well. His list of injuries might be the only thing actually distinguishing one day from the next. It's not all stitches and broken ribs, there are the punches to the gut and boots that roll over his hands when he's doing push ups.

Cary's gotten used to the taste of blood in his mouth. He's not sure if it's from biting the inside of his cheeks to keep his temper or the busted lips he gets when he doesn't.

He's not sure it matters. The end result is the same.

And time, time moves in a slow blur, but he counts days anyways.

 

Day 93:

Kalinda visits on Mondays.

Their conversations were strained at first. More sitting than talking. Kalinda's never been a chatterbox and Cary doesn't know what to say. But she comes anyways and each week he's more surprised than the last to see her sitting there, waiting, like she's been there since the week before and has grown bored.

It's strange how comfortable she seems in this space. Kalinda has never been one for rules but somehow the constraints here work in her favor, in their favor. They don't get to fall into the complicated place where there are emotions and awkwardness and repeating the same broken relationship cycle over and over again.

But she shows up. He was terrible to her and she helped him anyway. He nearly got her girlfriend fired and still she shows up. Maybe in a way they are still repeating the broken cycle. He's not sure. But it feels different. They talk now. About small things, the news, Alicia, old cases but they talk and it's something. A something he grows to depend on more than he cares to admit.

 

Day 182:

When he leaves this place, he'd like to say it got easier. He'd like to say he made friends and learned to cope with prison culture. He'd like to say that he was able to take care of himself.

So far none of that is the case.

The air is always stiff and heavy, constricting his breathing and making him feel small. His fellow inmates never warm to him but rather get bored and move on to the next plaything. He doesn't organize a protest to get them better quality food nor does he find camaraderie in the pick up basketball games the inmates play in the yard. He thought about trying to join in for about 30 seconds but Cary was never much for sports and he doesn't like the idea of giving his fellow inmates more chances to squash his face in with a “stray” elbow.

What does happen is this: he trades legal advice like it’s a commodity and weasels his way into a job in the prison library. They keep him sane enough: the law and the library. He has read a fair share of the books already, many of them battered copies of classics and popular novels, but it's not the reading as much as walking along the shelves. There's comfort in the dust and smell of books. It may be small and somewhat strange (the filing system is an adventure in absurd - who would have ever thought to arrange books by size) but for a few minutes at a time, Cary can pretend he's back in law school shuffling up and down the shelves for the perfect reference to argue his case.

And then reality crashes back down on him.

 

Day 367:

One year down, one to go.

That's what Alicia tells him. It's not really true. A few fights, some his fault and some not, mean that he'll be spending a few weeks extra in here, but one year down does seem kind of momentous. At the same time it feels no different from anything else. He wants to feel like he can see the light at the end of the tunnel but he doesn't. He feels tired and small and the weight of what comes next is as heavy as the weight of the next year in prison. He won't be able to practice law, the only thing he ever wanted to do.

 _“What’s next?”_ echoes in his ears at night.

He rolls over and pulls the pillow down over his ears.

 

Day 488:

"I think you should write."

His weekly visit with Kalinda took an unexpected turn this week to his future, to life after prison. It's still too far off to feel like reality but he knows he will have to do something.

Writing hasn't exactly been at the top of the list, though.

His visits with Kalinda are weird and he doesn't know how else to describe it. But they are also the thing he looks forward to most every week. They are in some ways closer than they have ever been even while they could not be farther apart.

But they keep talking. The small conversations slowly turned into bigger conversations. He asks questions. She doesn't always answer them then, but slowly he gets parts of her story, of her, parts that he never thought about before. He's not sure if it's because he didn’t think she would answer questions like that, or if he was just that much of a jackass. He's not totally sure it's not the latter.

The turnabout is that she asks questions too and now she knows he wrote on his undergrad newspaper.

"Isn't journalism a dying profession?" His response.

She shrugged half-heartedly in that patented Kalinda way of hers.

"It was just a thought."

 

Day 552:

Cary can't get his hands on enough paper.

This seems strange but true. Sometime after his initial conversation with Kalinda, Cary started writing and hasn't stopped. It's an escape and his escape plan and he just wants to see if he can even get back into the swing enough to try. After a decade of legal writing, trying to find that groove of journalism is a lot harder than he anticipated but he likes the challenge and it keeps him focused.

He's not altogether unsure if that's not what Kalinda was aiming for.

 

Day 691:

A funny thing started happening when Cary hit 100 days to go: he starts to dread his release. He gets anxious and panicky when he thinks about the world outside the walls that have kept him contained for nearly two years.

Kalinda can feel the anxiety rolling of him in waves. He knows this because she got frustrated with him this week and left in a huff when he couldn't focus on anything she was saying.

His hands were drumming on the table, itching to get back to his pen and paper. His portfolio seeming more and more important with every day that passes. He still has some savings; he won't be destitute if he can't get a job right away. But the parole board will expect a job and he wants to avoid janitorial work at all costs.

So he writes, he writes like his life depends on it because it just might.

 

Day 745:

He doesn't expect the peace that he finds intermixed with the anxiety when he walks through the gates. But it's there all the same and he doesn't question it and he doesn't look back. He walks until he's standing a foot from Kalinda and until she reaches up to hug him, smiling all the while.

She pulls back and resumes her cool, calm demeanor. "Where to?"

Cary looks to the horizon and smiles. "It really doesn't matter."

She laughs. "Ok."

He climbs in the car, no idea where they're headed, anxiety still hanging on like a tired old friend but he also knows that whatever comes next has to be better than where he has been.

He stops counting days.


End file.
